Stories
Slash Boxes
Comments

SoylentNews is people

Systemd Crashing Bug

posted by CoolHand on Wednesday October 05 2016, @12:46AM   Printer-friendly
from the love-for-lennart dept.

mechanicjay writes:

Security researcher and MateSSL founder, Andrew Ayer has uncovered a bug which will either crash or make systemd unstable (depending on who you talk to) on pretty much every linux distro. David Strauss posted a highly critical response to Ayer. In true pedantic nerd-fight fashion there is a bit of back and forth between them over the "true" severity of the issue and what not.

Nerd fights aside, how you feel about this bug, will probably largely depend on how you feel about systemd in general.

The following command, when run as any user, will crash systemd:

NOTIFY_SOCKET=/run/systemd/notify systemd-notify ""

After running this command, PID 1 is hung in the pause system call. You can no longer start and stop daemons. inetd-style services no longer accept connections. You cannot cleanly reboot the system. The system feels generally unstable (e.g. ssh and su hang for 30 seconds since systemd is now integrated with the login system). All of this can be caused by a command that's short enough to fit in a Tweet.

Edit (2016-09-28 21:34): Some people can only reproduce if they wrap the command in a while true loop. Yay non-determinism!

Original Submission

 
This discussion has been archived. No new comments can be posted.
Systemd Crashing Bug | Log In/Create an Account | Top | 69 comments | Search Discussion
Display Options Threshold/Breakthrough Mark All as Read Mark All as Unread
The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way.

  • (Score: 3, Informative) by jmorris on Wednesday October 05 2016, @01:16AM

    by jmorris (4844) on Wednesday October 05 2016, @01:16AM (#410430)

    Yo, tard! The 2.1 series was unstable by design. 2.0, 2.2, 2.4 and 2.6 were stable, 2.1, 2.3, 2.5 the unstable branches. These days there isn't a need for an unstable tree because most of the low level stuff is pretty much in a final state, changing only slowly. Now we have the main branch and an LTS branch since the need is simply for kernel trees that will receive security patches for a long enough time to make them suitable for real world deployment.

    Starting Score:    1  point
    Moderation   +1  
       Informative=1, Total=1
    Extra 'Informative' Modifier   0  
    Karma-Bonus Modifier   +1  
    Total Score:   3  

  • (Score: -1, Flamebait) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 05 2016, @01:22AM

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 05 2016, @01:22AM (#410432)

    These days there isn't a need for an unstable tree because most of the low level stuff is pretty much in a final state, changing only slowly.

    Hey, fuckwit! That's the point! Linux is old mature software! Systemd is still new and immature! This story is sensationalist garbage!

    • (Score: 2) by Bot on Wednesday October 05 2016, @01:48AM

      by Bot (3902) on Wednesday October 05 2016, @01:48AM (#410444) Journal

      1. you did not ROTFLMAO at the GP epic fail
      2. you admit systemd has no place in any production system

      I either salute a subtle troll, or predict an astroturfer won't get his 50cents from RH.

      --
      Account abandoned.